SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND - APRIL 14: Mark Hughes of Southampton during the Premier League match between Southampton and Chelsea at St Mary's Stadium on April 14, 2018 in Southampton, England. (Photo by Matt Watson/Southampton FC via Getty Images)

The Premier League title might have been effectively decided months ago, but the relegation battle still could go down to the final day of the season. The cost of relegation is huge; the TV money and global coverage of the Premier League replaced by a 46-game slog in the hyper-competitive English Championship where many newly-relegated clubs struggle. But while nobody wants to get relegated, the majority of clubs outside the ‘big-six’ spent time in the drop zone at some point during this season.

So far in the 2017-2018 season, excluding the big six (Manchester United, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool), only Burnley, Watford, and Brighton and Hove Albion have not yet been inside the bottom three at the end of a game week (after games in hand have been taken into account) at some point from week five onwards.

Some of those Premier League teams were in the bottom three only very briefly, with Leicester City, Newcastle United, and Huddersfield Town there for just one game week, but still, the majority of Premier League teams were in the bottom three at some point this season.

Out of the other teams outside the top-six, Brighton has been in the bottom five at times this season, and Watford’s absence from the relegation zone is partly because of their strong start to the season. From the end of November to the start of February, Watford went on an awful run of one win from twelve games, which led to them changing manager in January, but their strong start kept the team well away from the drop zone.

Leicester City, on the other hand, fired Craig Shakespeare after the Foxes picked up just six points from their opening eight games, partly down to tough fixtures. If you ignore the games against the top six, Leicester had six points from four matches, which would lead to an average of 39 points over the season; not enough for Leicester’s lofty aspirations but enough to keep them in the Premier League.

In short, clubs outside the big six should expect to be in the drop zone at some point in the season, and owners can’t assume that their team will always have enough teams below them to feel comfortable. In a recent Financial Times article about Swansea City, the treasurer of the club’s supporters’ trust said “I think [Swansea’s owners] thought they were buying something a little more established and stable in the Premier League than we actually are.” But none of the clubs outside the top six are really ‘secure’. The small margins between being eighth in the league and being eighteenth shows that none of the ‘other fourteen’ can take their Premier League status for granted. Swansea fell all the way to the bottom of the league before the inspired hiring of Carlos Carvalhal started their revival. Money is no guarantee of safety either; just ask Southampton who have the eighth most expensive squad in the league according to transfermarkt.

The knee-jerk reaction to being in the relegation places has led to nine managerial changes by relegation-threatened clubs already this season, with many clubs bringing in ‘firefighters’ like Sam Allardyce and Roy Hodgson. The firefighters often work, with all three clubs in the bottom three in round 17 managing to get out of the relegation zone by round 28. But for every firefighting success story, there is a failure like David Moyes last season or Alan Pardew this season. Fans also want more than a ‘safe pair of hands’ to keep them in the Premier League. Everton fans can’t deny that under Sam Allardyce the club are now secure in the top half of the table far away from the freefall they were in beforehand, but they also feel that the club should play more attractive soccer and have ambitions beyond just staying in the top flight, and many fans claim Allardyce is not the man to help the club reach those ambitions.

But with so many clubs falling into the relegation zone at various times each season, as long as managers like Allardyce and Hodgson can guarantee a club Premier League survival and the financial windfall that comes with it, there will always be a demand for them.

Some people claim that these survival specialists are preventing younger unproven coaches from making the leap from coaching the reserves or youth team to managing the first team. There are five managers under 40 (and seven between 40 and 50) in Germany’s Bundesliga. But Bournemouth’s Eddie Howe, at 40 years old, is the youngest in the Premier League, with Stoke City’s Paul Lambert and Burnley’s Sean Dyche his only British counterparts under fifty. There are many reasons why young British managers aren’t getting the same chances to prove themselves as their German counterparts have had, including the two countries' different coaching pathways and the use of a 'director of football' model in Germany, but the cutthroat nature of the bottom half of the Premier League, and the huge costs of relegation, may be part of the reason why clubs want to play it safe when it comes to managerial appointments, even if these ‘safe’ appointments don’t always work out.